Letters to the editor: 04-18-17

Monday

Apr 17, 2017 at 9:49 AMApr 18, 2017 at 9:39 AM

Contributed Content

A dark path

"Our" representative Paul Cook has chosen a dark path. Mr. Cook refuses to meet openly with his constituents. He has been invited by Indivisable to a town hall paid for by his constituents. I voted for Mr. Cook in 2012 seeing him as the lesser of two bad choices. I am an independent who votes for candidates, not parties. Mr. Cook would do well to engage with people that agree with him on many topics. By ignoring people who disagree with him on some topics he has chosen his party over his constituents. I believed Mr. Cook was better than that but he seems determined to prove me wrong.

Richard Ralson

Apple Valley

Futile arguments

It is an exercise in futility to argue any political position, right, left, liberal or conservative, by referencing the Scripture to bolster a point of view in support or contrary, as Jesus is apolitical. His reply to the political hypocrites of His time was stated as follows: "Render therefore unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's." — Luke 20:25.

May you all (Christian and nonChristian) introspectively/intellectually celebrate the meaning and purpose leading to and culmination in Jesus dying on the cross for all of fallen humanity......"the Easter Season."

Lee Bell

Apple Valley

Water company acquisition

Doing a search of the Town of Apple Valley's website regarding water acquisition hot button, I find the Water System Acquisition Information dated November 2015 and the Appraisal Summary of March 25, 2015, but the document is really the June 15, 2015 update of seven pages.

Review of page 3 rate base shows duplicated line #5s and the fact that several line numbers do not match those of the CPUC filings and definitely not June 15. Filings are as of beginning and end of year. So what is the town really doing once again?

Disaster forthcoming, IMO.

Al Rice

Apple Valley

The party of hate

Whenever the dishonesty of the George W. Bush/Dick Cheney administration in inciting support for their costly and illicit war in Iraq, which is largely responsible for the current major mess in that part of the world, is commented on, the standard Republican response is always “but Democrats voted for it too.”

Always omitted from the debate is the fact that the reason people like Senators Reid, Clinton, Kerry and Biden voted for the war is because they, and the world, were lied to by the Bushies, who knew what they were saying wasn’t true but were too determined to get Iraq’s oil to worry about the consequences of their actions. They didn’t even get the oil, they just killed a lot of people and angered a lot more, which the world is still paying for today.

As for "the party of hate," which party's candidate made Islamophobia a part of his campaign and which party is promoting it on a daily basis?

Richard Boyd

Victorville

Construction lacking

From 1990 to 2015, the four Victor Valley cities built over 1,600 new homes per year. Some years were better than others, but that's the average over a 26-year period. Unfortunately, the region has been lucky to hit 400 new homes in recent years.

Those 1,200 missing new homes each year mean the area is missing about 2,000 construction jobs (using a simple multiplier from the NAHB). Adding those 2,000 jobs to the local economy would make a big enough dent in the unemployment rate to reduce it from 6 percent to about 4.5 percent.

Construction is an inherently entrepreneurial industry that offers opportunity to people without a college education. It's one of the few industries we have left that offers a real path from hard work (and no college), to owning your own business someday.

California has lots of problems, but many of them would be solved if we could start creating opportunities for people who have lost any economic optimism. Construction jobs aren't the only thing we can do, but they're one of the things we can do. The best part is that they help the people that need it most right now.

John Reeder

Claremont

Clearing things up

Re: "The left's God," letters to the editor, Daily Press ...

1. Donald Trump was not “duly elected” president of the United States, Hillary Clinton was. But our stubborn adherence to the archaic Electoral College, who made the great presidential error of 2016, left us with a third-rate reality TV show host completely unqualified and unfit for the job who is a proven pathological liar who has cheated thousands of people out of millions of dollars, lied about his own personal and business connections with Vladimir Putin and Russia and leads an administration full of other unqualified people with suspicious connections to Russia the FBI is starting to expose, who refuses to divest himself from his international business interests as the Constitution requires, and is notorious for his mistreatment of those he regards beneath him, especially women.

There are many on both sides that want to see an independent council looking into the evidence of Trump’s illicit ties to Russia and others. Would Trump have been “elected” if the voters had known he was being investigated by the FBI for his Russian connections since last July?

As for the totally inept and unpopular Congress, it is the Republicans of that body who are working to deny even more Americans the basic right to health care coverage while giving huge tax cuts to the wealthiest of Americans, as usual, a job made easier by having a like-minded president. They were the ones who denied President Obama’s Supreme Court pick Merrick Garland even a hearing on his appointment and then changed the rules so they could get their chosen right-wing zealot on the court, with Mitch McConnell then having the gall to say “The opposition to this particular nominee is more about the man that nominated him and the party he represents than the nominee himself.”

2. Most Americans know the difference between a baby and a fetus. What does the right’s God think about the tens of thousands of people killed by guns every year in America, like the eight-year-old boy who died in San Bernardino because we allow people to carry guns powerful enough for the killer to shoot through his estranged wife and hit a child standing behind her?